Oh what a slippery slope.
What do you mean?
I hate that the term “alcoholic blackout” means something very different than “blacked out”. One having to do with memory and the other with a physical state that’s like being asleep.
It causes a lot of confusion.
A lot of people don’t realize what an alcoholic blackout is, and don’t even know there is such a thing. We should adopt a different term to get rid of the confusion.
Every time we talk about a guy having sex with a woman in an alcoholic blackout, someone is thinking “Well of course he shouldn’t have sex with a woman who is unconscious,” not realizing that we’re talking about a woman who is conscious but not forming long-term memories, a state undetectable to him.
Perhaps “alcoholic amnesia” would be a better way of describing that condition, to distinguish it from being blackout drunk?
Alcoholic amnesia is what you experience when you wake up and don’t remember what happened the night before. But we need a term for the night before, when you are in a state when, later, you are not going to be able to remember what happened.
Nooooo, don’t bring that up and turn it into a debate.
Great interview Hanna. I am always impressed with your ability to square up an idea and get right to the center of it.
I’m going to disagree with this. Blackouts are extremely rare if your BAC is below 0.15. If someone truly blackouts, it’s reasonable to assume their BAC was over the 0.08 threshold to drive, and very likely at least double that.
Well, many people can be well over the threshold to drive and still appear to be capable of participating in consensual sex. Two entirely different things.
And yes, any sort of intoxication is likely to impair judgment in a way that a person can regret later on — but post-coital regret is not the same thing as lack of consent.
Googling has led me to this very excellent article – which specifically addresses the issue of sex-while-drunk while also detailing expected level of function at various BAC levels: https://www.officer.com/investigations/article/10959606/blood-alcohol-levels-and-blackouts
This is circular in as much it begs the question of whether it’s possible for a college student to be over 0.08 and still be capable of meeting their university’s definition of consent. In many, maybe most colleges, I’m betting the answer is no. Obviously, different colleges define consent in different ways.
People can be more-or-less functional during blackouts. They can carry on conversations and drive cars. We can disagree about how drunk someone should appear to be to qualify as unable to consent, but it’s not obvious to me that someone capable of conversing and (illegally) driving is incapable of consent.
So are you suggesting that males need to administer breathalyzer tests on women they meet?
Because if I know one thing from all my years practicing law, way back when, it’s that it’s damn hard for a person to know their own BAC at that level, much less anyone else’s.
Source: End Violence Against Women International - http://www.evawintl.org/PAGEID25/Best-Practices/FAQs/Consent
SUNY - https://system.suny.edu/sexual-violence-prevention-workgroup/policies/affirmative-consent/
I just picked the two colleges that came up near the top of Google search results based on the search terms I entered - it seems that every college pretty much has its own written policy.
@“Cardinal Fang”
We need to be careful to distinguish the legal definition of consent for criminal law purposes from the definition of consent used by colleges for Title IX purposes. In the student handbook of one large public college I looked up, consent is defined as not possible when a student is substantially impaired. In explaining what substantially impaired means, it gives the example of being blackout drunk. Being capable of carrying on a conservation is insufficient for being able to give consent at a number of schools. I’m not even sure it makes sense to talk about whether someone is capable of illegally driving. That sounds like an oxymoron to me.
If I’m physically able to drive, but it is not legal for me to drive, then I am capable of illegally driving. As a matter of fact, this happens to be true of me right now. I lost my license (lost in the sense that I misplaced it some weeks ago and don’t know where it is) yet I am capable of getting up right now, walking to the garage, getting into the car which sitting there and driving it away.
@“Cardinal Fang” can’t you print out a temporary license online and ask them to mail you a permanent one? I’ve had to do that several times for me and other members of my family. It costs only a few dollars here.
Hey @Hanna, can you clear this up?
@roethisburger bets that at many or most colleges it’s impossible for a college student to have a BAC over 0.08 and still be capable of meeting their college’s definition of consent. I’m willing to take that bet; I’m confident that very few colleges would classify a student with the impairment that would result from a BAC of around 0.08 as unable to consent.
A 140-pound woman would get a BAC of 0.08 from about three and a half drinks. In the cases I’ve heard about, the students consumed a lot more than that.
I wonder if Hannah has ever worked with a woman who was raped, not believed, and rather than go to school with her rapist, feels compelled to search for a new school.
@Nrdsb4 I’m not sure that woman needs the type of help Hannah would charge to provide. That woman does not have a “black mark” against her that needs to be explained to other colleges… She would simply be one of many students wishing to transfer. If she felt the need to explain why (perhaps because she was transferring later in her college education than is typical) she could certainly explain her situation in whatever level of detail she felt comfortable. But she does not have to convince a future college that she is not a safety risk for them.
Maine Longhorn, I might be able to print out a temporary license. I bike, so I haven’t gotten around to dealing with replacing my license yet. after Christmas I”ll do it.
So I let this run a little bit. But from the discussion we can see that using drinking to determine consent is kind of a problem. Is the standard .08? That’s technical DUI but it’s not really so drunk that you can’t know what you are doing. Is it something higher? Passed out drunk – that’s easy and obvious. But between the two extremes? And if one person can’t consent because they where drinking, then can the other one? If two people where both drinking, and both deemed not be be able to consent because of the drinking, then aren’t they both “guilty?”